China in your hands - Get the wow factor

The Sun, Saturday, May 14, 2005 - Article by Andy Colvin

As the revolving restaurant offered yet another view of downtown Beijing my wife Lynne and I looked at each other and said: "It can't get any better than this."

We couldn't have been more wrong. It was only day one of a 14-day Archers Direct trip to China and by the time we had returned to Beijing at the end of a tour, the revolving restaurant didn't even merit a second thought.

In those two weeks we had packed in enough memories to last a lifetime.

Four flights, one bus trip and four days cruising up the Yangtze River saw us cover thousands of miles and visit cities with a combined population of 70 million people.

The figures are mind boggling but there's only one number which matters.

China's not a five-letter word, it's a three-letter word and that word is wow. It first escaped our lips in Beijing when we visited Tiananmen Square and saw a queue of 30,000 people waiting to see Chairman Mao in his glass coffin.

And it became an all-too-regular part of the vocabulary as one stunning sight after another was laid before us.

Even walking across Tiananmen Square to reach the Forbidden City was an experience.

Crowds of Chinese wanted their pictures taken with us. I'm not sure if it was my ample girth or long hair which caught their imagination but a Martian couldn't have drawn more attention.

But once inside the Forbidden City the cameras were all trained on the stunning buildings and treasures of the Ming and Qing dynasty emperors. The film The Last Emperor doesn't do the place justice. The Chinese fellow next to me must have said wow half a dozen times as we walked through the courtyard into the shimmering Hall of Supreme Harmony with its golden columns and gilt walls and ceiling.

There are 100 rooms like it in the Forbidden City and by the time you leave you think "It can't get any better than this".

Wrong. In Beijing alone there's the Summer Palace with its world famous Marble Boat, there's the Temple of Heaven, best visited on a Sunday when crowds of Chinese gather to sing traditional songs in the open air and there are the Mingh Tombs, with their unbelievable gardens.

So much to see, so little time. And by the time we'd flown to Shanghai for a two night stay, jetted on to Wuhan for an overnight stop and taken a five-hour coach ride through the awesome flood plains of Hubei Province to pick up our cruise ship, the MV Yangzijang, for a four-day journey up the Yangtze, messing about on the river was just what the doctor ordered.

Not a chance. Tour guide Lily informed us our wake-up call the following morning would be at 6.40am.

There was mutiny in the air as tired tourists grumbled at the lack of rest.

The grumbles hadn't subsided much by the following morning as we sullenly gathered on the sun deck but one sight of the towering mountains which frame the Xiling Gorge rendered everyone speechless, until someone uttered the now familiar wow. The Chinese are currently building the world's largest dam across the Yangtze, but suggestions it will spell the end of cruises once it's completed in 2009 are well wide of the mark.

A five step ship lock has been built alongside the dam, each lock holding six large ships, and after three hours we were through it and on our way again.

And on day nine, our second full day aboard the ship, came the highlight of the entire trip.

A smaller craft took us along the Shennong Stream, a tributary of the Yangtze.You can see farmers move their produce by sampan to hook up with the cargo ships on the main river.

Rhesus monkeys sit nibbling ears of corn on the slopes of towering bamboo covered mountains as the ship eases its way through to the village of Yeziba.

From there you board sampans, each of them paddled by six local men.

They used to paddle the sampans naked in the days before tourist boats reached Yeziba but decorum now means they don Nike shorts for the occasion.

And when the river gets too shallow to even paddle, they hop out and wrap bamboo ropes around their shoulders to literally haul the sampans up river, all the time singing local folk songs.

By the time we returned to the MV Yangzijang every one in the party was sporting the sort of fixed grin that means you are either very drunk or very happy. And none of us had touched a drop.

The same day we passed through the truly stunning Wu and Qutang Gorges before sunset as the experiences continued to pile up.

When we disembarked from the ship at Chongqing two days later, we were

telling ourselves, 'It can't get any better than that'.

When you consider that our next flight was to Xian, home of the Terracotta Warriors, it wasn't exactly a quiet turn back towards home. The villagers who uncovered the tomb of Emperor QinShihuang with its 2,000 Terracotta warriors some 30 years ago while drilling a well had no idea what they were starting. An estimated 40,000 people a day visit the Terracotta Warriors during public holidays and we arrived in Xian on Mayday, which is as major a public holiday as there is in China.

Chaos doesn't begin to describe it but it was still an awesome sight.

One of the villagers who found the warriors was autographing books in the museum shop and he's proof that celebrity is not always a bad thing.

He only learned to read and write after making the discovery because so many people wanted an autograph.

After the Warriors, there was only one thing left to do.

A flight back to Beijing and after a very quiet night, our coach took us to the Great Wall at Badaling.

The choice on offer is either taking a cable car up to a high point of the Wall or walking it.

Take my advice, walk it. There is no feeling to compare to walking on history. It was 84 degrees, there was 75 per cent humidity and you're about 4000 feet up.

But when you come back down two hours later, sweat blinding you and every muscle aching, the feeling of achievement is incomparable.

That word came out again - wow.

While I'm on the subject of doling out advice about China, here are a couple of pointers. Everyone has asked me about the food since I returned. It's unbelievably good and there's plenty of it. When shopping for souvenirs or gifts, always barter. The Chinese expect no less and every sales assistant comes equipped with a calculator so offer and counter offer can be made without any language problems. It's also dirt cheap. How to travel? I'd advise going on an organised tour. Lynne and I are both experienced at making our own way around the world but we both agreed China would be a daunting prospect.

We went with Archers Direct, one of the UK's leading tour companies and that's the best way to get to grips with China.

Being ferried around in air conditioned coaches is a major plus. Check out pictures of Chinese public transport if you don't believe me.

An organised tour also ensures all your meals are included and the hotels were five star every step of the way.

You also have the benefit of a local tour leader, in our case the wonderful Lily, with local guides joining the group on their own cities to give their own insights.

Those little snippets of information stick too and leave me feeling a little wistful every time China comes back into my mind.

By the time my wife and I were sitting in the revolving restaurant in Beijing again on our final night in China, we looked at each other and wondered if it could get any better than that.

It's hard to believe it could. But we'll go back to find out because knowing the Chinese, they'll have plenty more up their sleeves.